Harshad Bhatia examines contrasting architectural desires—urban nostalgia for vernacular forms versus rural aspiration toward concrete modernity. He critiques sustainability rhetoric and Smart City initiatives as quantitative exercises divorced from qualitative human needs, advocating instead for indigenous wisdom and stakeholder engagement.
Human memory carries a strong impression of a vernacular tradition towards architecture. Take the case of most drawings titled ‘My House’ by children in an art class studying in an urban school. They portray a low-rise pitched roof structure with trees on its sides and a path leading to the front door. This is also what conventional imagination draws to mind for an adult who hears the term ‘vernacular architecture’. It’s both common and popular to fall into this representation for a first-time recollection to denote vernacular.
On the other hand, residents in a rural settlement tend to show an aspiration towards RCC (reinforced cement concrete) built structures, quite like those seen aplenty in towns and cities. This is a consequence of the global communication means that exist today. It is also due to the inroads that the industries manufacturing materials such as cement and steel are seeking to widen their market and provide work through construction technology to aid the processes of consumption.
These two different types of forms: one with an expression of the vernacular tradition and the other as a modern-looking building, tend to be exchanged with each other by dwellers in their respective settings. At least, this seems to be what each layman’s conventional aspirations suggest. However, in the designer’s intention, such thinking rarely happens because the user’s needs are often not evident. In this regard, can’t the ‘urban’ school children’s sketch of a low-rise independent house with a sloping roof and the ‘rural’ settler’s idea of higher storey development in RCC be considered the user’s needs too?
This raises many pertinent questions about context. In the former type, indigenous thought exists as a need in an urban context, while the latter imagines an ingenious design in a rural setting—the low-rise pitch roof type design suggests sustaining a quality, whereas the RCC building form hints at smartness to quantify progress from a rural way of life.
Sustainability and the Quality of Life—Need Ingenious Doing
We, as settlers on this globe, are ever-increasing. We are producing our stock, and hence our corresponding consumption needs are also multiplying. However, the rate at which we multiply and the consumption rates are disproportionate. So, in effect, we are not consuming at the same levels each day. In fact, yesterday we were better off than today and also that today will be better than tomorrow, if we continue our life pattern as usual.
The truth of the matter is that we are not sustaining ourselves with our planetary environment. As time passes, day by day, we tend to adapt to a non-noticeable degradation in our quality of life as we move along. In physical terms, the land area available for each human is decreasing by the minute. Are we aware of this simple fact?
At the same time, we, as beings with intellect, have many ingenious ways and innovative techniques for expanding our resources. On the earth, therefore, we build. In layers and layers to provide more people with the basic shelter—the built habitat. To enable our sustenance and equity of the physical area per person occupant, we improve our means of communication, transport, and audio-visual. Motor cars, elevators, escalators, television sets, telephones, computers and internet networks are the new needs of the world today. These wants and desires, which were yesterday’s luxuries, are today’s social expectations.
They save time and bring space closer. They are resources of a new age. They are markers of the present. Never before in history has there been a precedent to this level of innovative production within such a short time. They are hence made to ensure a better quality of life for us today. Yet we are always exploring and inventing—to consume. We are living in a paradox. A situation which cannot pinpoint where it all started. How do we pull along in the scenario before us?
We need to do some serious thinking on sustaining ourselves—and thereby sustaining our environment. The consequences of our consumption needs are now proving to be malignant to the environment.
- Are we producing more than protecting?
- Are we widening the gap between progress and poverty?
- Are we capable of undoing the damage already done?
These are the most pertinent questions that concern the well-being of all life on earth. We have to make a holistic, sustainable proposition to avoid all consequences in doing so.
To begin with, can we start by preventing further damage to the environment? This shall be our first step in a direction towards our qualitative, holistic survival. It enables the gap between the inequality persisting in the developing and developed worlds to be stabilised instantly. Thereon, the future can be guided to allow us to bridge the gap. The state of balanced development can then be reached in its final form.
The Smart, Smarter, Smartest City—Needs Indigenous Thinking
In the wake of a vision to come within the ambit of the Smart Cities Mission, prompted by the Government of India, cities are posing a selfie question: “How smart is your city?” To which, the answer given is based on varying factors: differing scale widths, economic measures, technological capabilities, and such. Rarely are the people considered, in a primary sense, of making the place. City planning, thus, addresses the making of space. Quantity is seen as the measure of quality. This is how “smart”ness seems to be assessed.
More space for purposes related to built habitat and less use of energy resources, both ensuring success in being smart. Hence, when we see projects under the Smart City schemes, they are diverse in both planning and management types, and range from macro to micro levels of design. This changes the understanding of the Smart City model, which is getting redefined instead of being refined with application over time, place, and person.
The Smart Cities Mission mentions its intention, but does not elaborate on the action that needs to be taken. This leaves an open field, where conventional methods are being applied in the context of going smart. Hence, what could be achieved in a usual manner is being touted as “Smart” by using this word as a prefix to every normal situation.
The question then, to be asked, is “How is your city smart?”
Once the question is reoriented in this way, people are seen as the primary subject and the place as the qualitative object. Hence, for any existing settlement, be it a city, village, locality or such, it is extremely astute to document the positive traits of its content that must not be lost along the way of adopting any policy. Unfortunately, policies nowadays are framed with only the future in mind (that remains unseen and unknown, respectively) instead of mainly continuing the good that exists in the present. This attitude to formulating policy is itself not smart, and therefore, the idea of Smart City seems rhetorical, and maybe over-optimistic.
Another matter that needs direct attention in the understanding of “smart” as a practicable concept in the holistic manner of “city” planning is by doing a stakeholder analysis.
As there is a lack of precision in its application over the entire range of scales from individual human user to the population as a whole, implemented projects are in bits, no pun intended, and tend to miss the wood for the trees. Cities can then stop short of going beyond merely getting the ‘Smart City’ tag to gain media space and public funding, if any.
Of the many listed projects that seem to be applied in different cities to date, there needs to be clarity that sorts them out on the basis of their qualitative and quantitative goals. Once done, each project can be further separated as per domains in core infrastructure (water supply, sanitation & drainage, electricity supply, waste management etc), public transport and mobility, affordable (?) housing, governance, sustainable (?) environment, health and education, Information & Communications Technology (ICT), safety and security of all (human life span, universal design, gender etc) and others. At present, all initiatives seem to be put in one basket and therefore add to the confusion, and there is no understanding of how an existing city is smart.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Harshad Bhatia
Dieser Artikel ist neu veröffentlicht von / This article is republished from: Architecture Live/, 23.12.2025
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